Chinese New Years

I just need to get this out there. Chinese New Years? Awesome. If you like fireworks, cheesy TV specials and stuffing your face, this is the holiday for you. However, if you do not like firecrackers at 5 AM, a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting, or having every store in the country be closed for, like, all of February, you might want to get the hell out of China. So, what to do if you like all of the former and hate all of the latter? Then, you'd be me. And you'd be conflicted.

Chunjie, aka Chinese New Years, aka Lunar New Year, aka Post-Apocalyptic China for Two Weeks, is a festival. A huge, national, fifteen day long festival.





Those, my friends, are fireworks. For those of you who read my Barcelona blog (hah, right, like I have a readership), you remember that in Barcelona, setting a firework off next to a building was not uncommon during festivals like San Juan. China has a similar view, except "uncommon" is not the right adjective. China sets off fireworks next to buildings with no compunction whatsoever. That picture above is a firework going off between two highrises. No big deal. Is it safe? Uh, no. Walking around during chunjie gets exciting really quickly, since, you know, kids are exacting revenge on meddlesome neighbors by bombing their cars with firecrackers, and if you happen to be in the way of that firecracker, that sucks. Welcome to Darwinism at its finest. If you are oblivious, chunjie will eat you alive. And yet, I did survive.

I also went to a temple festival during chunjie with a couple friends from Beijing, Jordan and Bernice, awesome people (and no, I am not just saying that because Jordan is one-fourth of my readership on this blog). The festival was very interesting. Having never been to one before, I was surprised to see that they had imported snow and set up sledding areas, in addition to pony rides and food stands galore. Of course, I was basically the only laowai there. Staring from passersby definitely happened. One guy got very National Geographic with me, as in, he was in my face with a huge camera, snapping away while I failed at eating tofu. He was all but narrating, "And here we have a laowai in its natural habitat. Observe its eating habits. The laowai are not known for their mental or physical aptitude. Note how this one apparently cannot eat tofu correctly....*click* *click* *click*" Hey, I don't mind being a one-woman zoo. I really should start bringing a hat with me so people can give me money for being so entertaining, though.

During the Chinese New Years itself, I went to a homestay family. At dinner, there were four different languages being spoken: Spanish, English, Russian, and of course Chinese. Yeah, we IES students are THAT multicultural, it was a pretty awesome experience. The food was excellent (lots of jiaozi!!!), and the people were wonderful.

Overall, I like chunjie. It's got its downsides, but I like it. It makes me feel alive, in every possible way. Including ways that involve running for your life so you don't have an obituary that reads "Emily was a promising girl, who just happened to be obliviously walking by a firework when...."

CHINESE FOOD

So, there is something you need to know. If you think American Chinese food is anything like Chinese Chinese food, you have been misinformed. Incredibly. Horribly. However, there is hope. You can continue to read this post, and I can set the record straight.

CHINESE FOOD will be an ongoing posting topic, but this will be the introduction to the foodstuffs of Chinese awesomeness. So, how do I introduce a cuisine so multifarious, so delicious, so FRIGGIN' GOOD? I'll do it the only way I know how. I'm starting with the basics. And by basics, I mean what I lived off of for the first two weeks I was in China.

JIAOZI

So, Chinese dumplings are WAYYYY better than American Chinese food dumplings. For one thing, there are approximately a million varieties of Chinese dumplings, whereas the American counterpart has, bascially, vegetarian dumplings and pork dumplings, the end. In China, they have egg and mushroom, egg and spinach, egg and tofu, tofu and spinach, tofu and anise, anise and egg and mushroom, twenty different types of mushroom...and these are just the vegetarian ones, and only the ones I have tried. The best part? Dumplings are EVERYWHERE, and they are CHEAP AS SIN. I mean, I spend MAYBE 7 yuan on a serving that is enough to fill the stomach of a grown man. That is 1 dollar, in case anyone want the American conversion.

I have also made dumplings. It takes forever, but they are also INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS. Observe:




However, at some point, there is life beyond jiaozi and baozi. I mean, eventually you gotta move on. Well, I mean, you don't really have to. But unfortunately, during chunjie my favorite jiaozi place closed, so I was forced to move on to...

MALATANG

So, I'm gonna get this out there now, I like my food spicy. Like, just this side of painful spicy. Malatang is like my dream food, for that very reason.

Malatang is one of those Chinese foods that is awesome because it is playing with fire. Either the food tastes great, the end, or it ends in food poisoning. It's the Chinese equivalent of Russian Roulette. But hey, if it kills you, what a way to go!

Malatang is spicy, since it is a way of boiling vegetables and meat using a broth of peppercorn sauce and spices. The peppercorn kind of numbs your mouth a bit, which is good because the broth may conceivably kill you by being just THAT spicy.

Don't believe me? Here are some pics that my shed light on the HAWT HAWT HAWT that is malatang:


This is before I unwrap the magnificence of malatang.


This is what it looks like before it gets IN MY BELLY.


This is the sauce/boiling medium. Note the distinctly ORANGE LIKE DANTE'S INFERNO color. This is how you know your mouth may want to disown you after you eat it.

Malatang is godly. But, then, of course, during chunjie that place closed as well. Then my cuisine got a lot less interesting for awhile (ramen noodles anyone?).

However, a constant in any person's life in China is...

MILK TEA

I love bubble tea. China is like my homeland, in that regard. They, also, see the miraculous nature of tapioca in drinkable form, and they pay homage to it by making your very own, instant-coffee style milk tea-in-a-cup. It's almost as good as the stuff you get on the street, but I drink that stuff too quickly to get a photo, so here are some prepackaged ones until I can find my self-control, or bring my camera with me when I buy milk tea.



These are a few of the types they have.


Note the slightly demonic level of glee in my eyes.


So, these are my first few foods I learned about in China. Next up: Baozi, Fangbianmian, and Hongshao Qiezi (and, maybe, ACTUAL milk tea, if it survives long enough to be photographed)

Adventure, Illness, Tiger Leaping Gorge: All in a Day's Work

Yunnan. One of China's many provinces. Home to a wide array of Chinese ethnic minorities. I spent two weeks here in February. What happened? Oh, a lot happened. Highlights?

KUNMING IS AWESOME

Kunming is the capital of Yunnan. It is said to be "the San Francisco of China" or "the Denver of China," which I find endlessly amusing because, honestly, it is only like those cities in respect to the weather. Kunming does have amazing, temperate weather, the kind that thaws the frozen souls of Beijingers. To say Kunming is beautiful kind of doesn't do it justice. It has all the grunge of a city, so "beautiful" does not quite represent it correctly. However, it has that off-beat spark that makes it comparable to San Francisco. It has lovely parks with lakes in the middle (very picturesque. Check out the pictures if you don't believe me), and it is known for its flowers and fashion scene. Overall, I was a fan of Kunming.

KUNMING IS AWESOME, BUT ILLNESS IS NOT

At least, I was a fan of Kunming until I fell crazy ill on the overnight train from Kunming to Lijiang, a rural village in rural northern Yunnan. Now, no one likes reading about illness, so I'll keep this short: I basically couldn't keep food down for 3.5 days. Unfortunately, at that point in my study abroad program's travel itinerary, we were staying in EXTREMELY rural Yunnan, in the north, where medical care was in scant supply and sanitary food was not a guarantee at the best of times. When I hit the four day illness mark, my program decided it was time to go see a doctor...

IN WHICH EMILY FINDS OUT WHAT HEALTHCARE IS LIKE IN YUNNAN

You know the game Musical Chairs? You know how they made you play it in grade school, and you thought it had no applicability to real life, that it was just a game? You were wrong.

That game was preparing you to try to see a doctor in rural Yunnan.

It's very simple: since it was during a holiday, there was one doctor in the Shangri-la Hospital to see all patients waiting to receive a diagnosis. He sat at a desk in a room. There was a chair by that desk. There was a mob of people waiting to see him. Whoever gets into that chair first gets a diagnosis. It's like Musical Chairs, minus the music and plus some serious medical issues. Let's call it "Survivor: the Chairs Edition."

In this episode of "Survivor: the Chairs Edition," I had the opportunity to use my Mandarin language skills to attempt to communicate my situation, and my RA and our guide helped make sure we were actually communicating, not just saying words and not understanding each other. I then showed him some of the English medication I had taken to help alleviate my symptoms. He looks at this for a moment, like an archaeologist looks at a vaguely intriguing fossil, and then hands it back to me. He diagnoses me with gastroenteritis (still not sure that is what I had, but I think it was?) and prescribes me roughly 6 different types of medication. Unfortunately, the one medication I needed, a strong round of antibacterial meds, was the one thing he did not give me, since they likely didn't have any in rural Yunnan. I later talked to a Beijing doctor, who said what I was given should have helped eventually ("eventually" being the operative and disconcerting part of the sentence). Thankfully, my mom is a genius and had me bring Cipro to China, and I was genius enough to bring it with me on the Yunnan trip. Thus, I was eventually cured of my Yunnan disease, and I was able to attempt eating rice while enjoying Napa Village.

NAPA CUN

The living room of the homestay

The view outside the village leader's window

Napa Cun (纳帕村） is a village in rural Yunnan that was once part of the vast Tibetan subregion in China. Thus, the culture of the town is heavily steeped in Tibetan tradition. The women wear garb typical of a Tibetan household, and the houses all are believers in the Gelugpa sub-sect of Tibetan Buddhism, or they rejected Buddhism altogether, it's either one or the other. I was living with one of the families in Napa Village, with a mother, father, grandmother and an adorable two year old. Overall, the family was great. It would have been even better if I wasn't deathly sick, but it was still awesome nonetheless.

There is nothing like living in Napa Cun. It is authentically China, in its own way. These people have been braving the mountains of Tibet since time immemorial, and they are a hardy brood. I was literally living with them in their houses, and when I went to the bathroom (outside in an outhouse), I got to say hi to the yaks (and their two foot long horns).

Of course, that one night when I was very sick, Napa Cun was an interesting place to be ill. I literally had a little one-person party outside, in the yard, with the yaks and the obnoxious mallard duck that quacked its head off constantly. I had a flashlight, which I clung to like my life depended on it (it kind of did depend on it, actually....there was a ladder to climb in and out of the house, so the flashlight became very necessary). I had my cellphone, which SOMEHOW had service in Napa Cun, which I used to call my mother in the States to be like "Yeah, this isn't food poisoning...thoughts? Oh, and what is my medical insurance number again?" Actually, I think it was way more panicked than that, but that was the general gist of the call. All I can say is that the time change works in my favor when I want to call the States at 3 am. Anyways, I survived (again), and all was well. I really do like Napa Cun. The people are incredibly friendly, we had all kinds of dance parties, and I think my Napa Cun host family genuinely didn't want me to die.

...AND THEN TIGER LEAPING GORGE HAPPENED

So, when we went to Tiger Leaping Gorge, I had kept food down for a day and a half. I nonetheless decided to try to climb this gorge. This hike is 22 km, and the first part and the last part are INTENSE, can't-breathe, legs-burning, heart-committing-sepaku kind of intense. Put it this way: I ran the San Francisco half-marathon in July of 2010. I am in roughly as good of shape right now as I was in July. This hike was overall harder than the half-marathon. That may have been because I hadn't eaten food for four days of that week, or because I was on bed rest for most of the week. Regardless, it was a hard hike.

But, it was also beautiful. Gorgeous. Breathtaking. The sheer enormity of the mountains and the depth of the gorge just blew my mind. It was majesty as far as the eye could see. I have pictures, but they only barely do it justice.

AND WE WENT TO OLD TOWNS. AND IT WAS PICTURESQUE.

Here, have some pictures:

This concludes the Yunnan travel adventures. It was full of ups and downs, of staying with Tibetan families and dancing Tibetan dances, of illness and overcoming mountains. It's a trip I will never forget.

The Journey Begins

This blog is, more or less, a chronicling of my seven months in Beijing, China.

While the journey here began officially on January 20th, 2011, this trip was years in the making. Those of you who know me well know that I am an International Relations/Politics and Asian Studies Major, and that I spend innumerable hours studying Chinese in any given semester.

Why? Why spend the time learning a challenging language, especially since I have studied Spanish? The answer is complicated, and not one I entirely understand myself. It is one part adventure, one part intrigue, one part the thrill of linguistic challenge, and several parts bullish perseverance. This trip is a test of what I have learned in college thus far and what my entire college career has been preparing me to do.

I was not originally sure I would be doing a blog while in Beijing. However, having just returned from Yunnan, I realize now that this trip deserves a blog. The experiences of this laowai may not be like those of others, but this is my time in China as I perceived it.

WHAT IS LAOWAI(老外）?


In this blog, I will inevitably be referring to Chinese terms. I will do my best to define them all as best I can.

Perhaps one of the most important Chinese words for a foreigner in Beijing to know is "laowai". Meaning foreigner, or literally "old outsider," it is a Beijinger or a Chinese person's way of identifying travelers from foreign countries. I am, most definitely, a laowai. I have been informed as such multiple times, often by children in the street who point at me and exclaim in surprise "LAOWAI!" Or, just as likely, I hear the term whispered between adults in undertones of wonder or, occasionally, distain. To be fair, your average Beijinger could care less about my laowai status. To a Beijing native, the laowai are a part of life, much like the KFCs or Starbucks that are scattered throughout this immense city. However, when I venture beyond Beijing's urban sprawl, my hair, my skin, my eyes, my very foreign appearance is a source of interest. In other words, the word "laowai" is never far from my mind.

Thus, I named this blog the Laowai Chronicles. For seven months, I am that nebulous identity of laowai, perceived of as a foreign entity by the Chinese people, and constantly reminded of my foreignness. Now, I do not resent this role. I knew I would be playing this part in China. I acknowledge it and I own it. My intent when I came to China was not to become Chinese. My intent was to see with my own eyes a culture that is becoming increasingly important on the international stage. Thus, this blog is for myself to remember what I saw, and how people saw me. It is also for those who want to know what I am experiencing in China.

This intro post is dry, I know, but I felt this blog needed some justification beyond just "Well, here's a blog folks!" In the next few posts, I will be detailing my entry into China, my adventures in Yunnan, and the rest of my time in China.

Welcome to China, Now Just Survive the Taxi Ride

Traveling is a challenge.

Mind you, I'm not a novice at flying. I've been traveling on planes alone since age 9, and I have flown several times overseas on my own. However, logistics on both ends of flying are kind of a special place in hell for me. I do not like the jumble of getting off a plane, jet-lagged as all get out, then playing "find the baggage in the labyrinthine airport terminal," and then playing the "where the hell am I living again?" game.

Arriving in China, my first thought was "Thank god I am finally here." I had a nice, thirteen hour flight to contemplate that I was leaving my country of birth for the longest period of time ever. And that I would not see my family for seven months, the longest period of time I have ever gone without visiting them. And that I knew all of maybe two people in the whole friggin country of China.

Needless to say, I did not get much rest on the flight.

When I got there, I was relieved to end this leg of the journey. I just needed to get to my dorm at BeiWai, and then I could pass out.

There is one serious obstacle that stood between me and a bed. Danger, thy name is Taxi Driver.

So. I had really only one viable option: use a taxi to get to BeiWai. Now, taxis are a special creature in China, and the drivers in them speak in a special type of Beijing accent that is near incomprehensible. It is, in fact, a testament to a student's Chinese language ability to be able to communicate and understand Beijing taxi drivers. You can imagine, with me getting off the plane and having not spoken Chinese for a month and it being 4 am my local time and all, that my Chinese was less than stellar.

Somehow, through a combination of broken Chinese, some random "arrr" sounds thrown in to sound vaguely Beijing accent-like, some pantomime, some pointing at Google maps I had printed, and a lot of repeating "BeiWai BeiWai BeiWai," the taxi driver finally realized that I wanted to go to BeiWai. He proceeded, through some miracle beyond my comprehension, to take me there.

There was only one small mishap. See, Beijing traffic is death. It's like the "dog eat dog" proverb as lived out in highway scenarios. So, we were traveling along nicely, with only a few spurts of vicious honking and a few choice words uttered by the taxi driver. However, at a tight intersection, this bus had the nerve to want to merge into the lane. My taxi driver was having none of it. As the passenger, I could do nothing but watch as my taxi driver decides to play chicken with a huge bus.

He proceeds to lose. Duh.

The bus taps the taxi. Yes, the taxi was hit by a bus. A bus hit the taxi. This was what was running through my sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, completely overwhelmed mind. I sat there completely at a loss, while my taxi driver gets out of the taxi, in the middle of the Beijing highway, to berate the bus driver. This carried on for about a minute or so. I was still sitting there, unclear as to what the protocol is for a taxi passenger who's taxi has just been tapped by a bus full of people. Well, the bus backed up a bit, and my taxi driver got back in and drove off as though nothing had happened.

I did make it to campus in one piece. I also learned a valuable lesson: All is fair in love, war, and Beijing transit situations. Go for the kill, or be killed.